1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to equipment used in the process of thermal screen printing particularly equipment useful for printing designs, letters and numbers on T-shirts. More precisely, the immediate invention is a portable, multi-color positionable screen frame thermal printer which can utilize small thermal printing screens.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The prior art teaches a wide variety of multi-color screen printers for use in printing designs on a wide variety of articles. The screens used for this process are printed by a thermal process with a design and stretched and edgewardly fixed onto a rectangular frame to keep the design taught during printing. When a multicolor design is used, a separate screen must be created for each different color in the design. Care must be taken to assure accurate placement of each separate screen as each consecutive color is added. Misalignment of the screens will cause an undesirable overlapping of the edges of the separate colors. Multiple rotatable screen clamps now in use make accurate alignment of the separate colors of a multi-color design possible. Framed print screens releasably affix two or more screens onto a rotating base which accurately aligns each screen, one at a time, over the garment are used. In the past art, however, many printers shown are designed to hold a certain size screen in a fixed position or are assembled in such a way as to make easy transportation of the printer unfeasible. Specifically, the major drawback to the existing screen printers is the inability of the apparatus which secures the screen to be positioned past the lower edge of the garment support surface due to underhanging obstructions on the bottom side of the clamp. When adjustability of the screen clamp is limited, full size screens are required even if a small design is used. The material used and the process of creating each screen is not inexpensive. Reducing the screen size as can be done with the present invention results in substantial savings, especially for the small businessman.